bpi1700

British Printed Images To 1700

Research Section

Print of the month

No. 12, August 2007

The Cats Castle Besieged and Stormed by the Rats

One particular constituent reversal of the monde renversé topos, that of
the cats hunted by the rats, early achieved independence as a subject in its own
right, in the form of The Cats Castle Besieged and Stormed by the Rats.
As a print, it was popular throughout Europe, from as early as c.1500 in
Germany,1 but the earliest known English example to
survive was issued some time after c.1665, qrinted [sic] and Sould
by John Overton, though it does not appear in any of Overton's
published catalogues; it is preserved uniquely in the Department of Prints and
Drawings at the British Museum. A very closely-related version, but without any
imprint, is held in the Library of Congress collection.

Without attempting a comprehensive listing, subsequent eighteenth-century
versions include the 'wood royal' Cat's Castle, besieged and stormed by the
Rats recorded in Marshall and Dicey's '1764' catalogue;2Cats castle besieged by the rats issued by John Marshall c.1790
(Bodleian); another of c.1790 by Bowles & Carver, and a version closely
related to this, bearing the imprint of G (?) Ash of Fetter Lane, London
(British Museum), and yet another example issued by G. Sheppard which is at the
Lewis-Walpole Library, Farmington, Connecticut.

The present Overton sheet dramatically presents the feline fortress centre-stage,
with flags flying from its turrets, a bell tower and a cupola with a rat being
hanged from a protruding mast. In it stands Maister Tybet [sic]
prince of Cat[s], who proclaims:

My command is to you allTo kill the Rats both great & smal

continuing:

Downe with the Rouges [sic] defend me now or neverIf they get up we are undon for ever.

However, the castle is the subject of a formidable assault by its rodent
adversaries, with ladders set up against its walls, cannons on every side and
advancing phalanxes of attackers, including a group approaching from the bottom
left in a boat with the legend:

To the right is the rats’ encampment with Nigro Musell prince of Ratts
in his tent, where he is being told by a rodent advisor:

Your commistion [sic] is to kill and destroyMischevous Cats that doe your state annoy.

Above this is a gallows where a rat is hanging a cat with the legend: up you
goe Mistriss puse, and another cat is having a noose put round her
neck. Below are two scenes which appear inset in rectangular frames (though, in
fact, only one may properly be so called—close inspection shows that it is the
pole of the banner which forms the apparent lefthand margin of the scenes).
These apparently inset scenes perhaps adumbrate the comic-strip presentation of
later versions; the 'upper scene' shows two rats reading the letter of
commission with its pendent seals, while the 'lower' one, showing a band of
eight rats armed with halberds and spears held aloft, is captioned,

if wee these catcs [sic] can overcom and killof cheese and Bacon we shall have our fill.

This literary humour is reflected in details of the image—the rats' banners
displaying cheeses and hams, while the flags flown from the cats' castle bear
fish (three fish in the earliest-known German woodcut of c.1500, and also in the
late seventeenth-century English version where they appear above the legend
Herrings for ever, while the ensign which flutters from the stern
of The Royal Rat depicts two rats either side of a large circular
cheese over the motto, Cheshire Cheese for ever).

The names of the two battle-leaders on the present sheet perhaps suggest
derivation from some French version (Tybert—spelled correctly in the
Library of Congress impression—and Nigro Musell, perhaps Black Snout,
the latter element from Old French musel, snout), and yet in an early
seventeenth-century French version of La grande & merueilleuse
Bataille, d’entre les Chats, & les Rats, which bears the
imprint A Lyon pour Leonard Odet; au coin de rue Ferrandiere, 1610, the
prince des Chatz is named Mitou, while in a later
seventeenth-century version, closer in composition to the present example,
issued by Pierre Bertrand in Paris and entitled Le Fort des Chatz assiege
par les Ratz, he is named Raminagrobis (probably the source of
the name of La Fontaine's feline hero). It is curious that it is the English
sheet rather than the French one which uses the name Tibert for the
cats' leader. Deriving from the name given to the cat in the medieval French
beast-epic, the Roman de Renart, it was certainly familiar to the
Elizabethans and lies behind Mercutio's punning reference to Tybalt as
King of Cats in Romeo & Juliet (III.i.76), and
Nashe's contemporary reference to Tibault...Prince of Cats in Have
with you to Saffron Walden (1596). By the time of the late
eighteenth-century English sheets, the protagonists are the less
colourfully-named King Mew and Prince Squeak.

Though all European versions of the print bear a close generic resemblance,
telltale details in the English version suggest it derives immediately (in
reverse) from a Dutch model.3

The originators of the prints have left the siege in the balance—from the images
it is not possible to guess the outcome—but the lengthy verse text accompanying
the Lyon version, at least, makes it clear that the cats, who are explicitly
said to represent great villains [gros larrons], successfully defend
the castle and the few surviving rats, representing the lesser villains [les
petits] are forced to flee. The earliest known version similarly leaves
the outcome of the siege undecided, but we are given some orientation as to how
to read this provocative image from the couplet

disi figur get alle di andy iren obristen under sta[n]

This image refers to all thosewho are subject to their superiors

Though even this in its ambiguity—tautology, indeed!—gets us no further, though
German commentators have noted the popular peasant movements in late
fifteenth-century Germany associated with such names as the Bundschuh,
and a little later, Armer Konrad. At the time our present print was
issued, the tragic upheaval of the English Civil War was still fresh in the
memory, and it is quite possible that an earlier (lost) version—or, just
possibly, the very version without imprint in the Library of Congress—had been
issued in the 1630s or 1640s. But while there is some reason to believe that the
rats storming the cats' castle was sometimes capable of a political
interpretation, it seems that for the majority of viewers most of the time it
was a purely humorous image.